Game Review: Fallout 2D20

In the world of Tabletop RPGs (TTRPGs), Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is the most popular rules system. When I explain the idea of playing TTRPGs to people unfamiliar with the hobby, it’s easiest to start with D&D, just like your grandparents would have said you were playing Nintendo whenever you were playing video games, even if you were actually playing Atari or Sega. Even though D&D rules the market, a lot of other games are available, and they may even be preferable to people who aren’t interested in D&D for one reason or another. Today, I’m bringing you a review of the Fallout 2D20 TTRPG from Modiphius Entertainment in case you’re looking for an alternative game to play.

For people who aren’t familiar, the Fallout universe is an alternate American history heavily influenced by 1950s Americana. Characters typically live in settlements built in a radiation-blasted wasteland approximately 200 years after a world-shattering nuclear war with China. However, many people come from Vaults that served as fallout shelters to protect certain citizens from the coming apocalypse. There are many video games, a board game, a miniatures tactics game (like Warhammer 40k, for those familiar with the genre), and a TV show on Prime. It’s one of my favorite media franchises, but the TTRPG isn’t something I’ll recommend for everyone given the following details.

I’ll start with the rules. I found that they’re approachable for players, even for people who have never played TTRPGs before. The character sheet is only two pages long and breaks down stats in a manner that’s easy to track. Taking actions requires players to roll between two and five 20-sided dice, hence the 2D20 system name, and they have to roll below a target number, with a one being the best number and a 20 being the worst. Players have seven different stat scores that combine with skill scores to give players their target number (such as the Strength stat score of 5 plus the Athletic skill score of 2, giving a target number of 7). For each D20 rolled with a 7 or lower, the player marks a success. When a player needs to achieve a goal that comes with some level of risk, the Game Master (GM) will tell the player that they need between one and five successes to achieve their goal. Players have ways to improve the chances of increasing their potential successes, such as “purchasing” more dice from a community resource pool or rolling a one on the die, making it a critical success worth two “successes.”

This is the basic mechanic for all actions in the game, which means the players only need to track their stats and skills when attempting to perform some kind of test. In combat, they also roll damage dice that will do one or two points of damage (with a one-in-three chance of no damage per die), and they have a chance of adding an effect, like “on fire” or “bleeding.”

Those are the easy parts of the rule system, and if you use only those mechanics, you can have a great time with a one-shot or campaign. At this point, if this were all I had to discuss, I would highly recommend this game for all players, especially as an introduction for those who are new or learning. If you’re willing to stop here and treat the rest of the mechanics as optional, it’s a great way to tell shared stories with your friends.

However, there are some survival mechanics that add a lot of complexity to the game. I love the idea for a potential campaign that I could run with friends, but rookie GMs beware: you have to keep track of thirst, hunger, and rest for the players because you are in charge of the in-game clock. You also have to track an additional form of loot (the food and beverages) that people can get and make sure you’re giving the players opportunities to get the resources to survive the wasteland.

A lot of games also offer an “encumbrance” mechanic to track how much stuff player characters are carrying, and many GMs require players to keep track of how much ammunition they have for their ranged weapons, as well. In D&D, I don’t do this because it detracts from the narrative. But in Fallout, the ammo tracking mechanic is built in to allow players to increase their potential damage, which means forcing players to use ammo as a valuable resource instead of treating as something they have in infinite supply. The mechanic becomes a valuable method for maintaining story tension and ensuring players are careful in combat and thinking of ways to avoid it in favor of negotiation. This means Fallout is not necessarily the most approachable TTRPG for newer players who want to focus on storytelling over rules and inventory tracking.

For GMs, designing quests and encounters is fairly easy once you get the hang of the non-player characters (NPCs) in the game. But there’s a bit of a learning curve when it comes to balancing NPC power versus PC abilities and level. Adding in NPC factions, maintaining settlements, and environments means GM prep is harder to improvise than some other games might be. The most time-consuming part of GMing is preparing loot. As a survival game, salvage and scavenging plays a major role. There are many tables available to help randomize loot, but you have to be purposeful when preparing opportunities to help your players survive.

Finally, the setting is pretty bleak, but the games also embrace satire (with somewhat dark and sometimes gallows tones) to face socially, morally, and philosophically complex themes. Death, corruption, and brutality are ever-present, which makes this game best-suited for more mature players who are looking to explore nuanced and complex ideas that may make them face uncomfortable situations and make decisions that have no “good” or “right” option.

In conclusion, if you’re looking for something different and are willing to embrace the survival game genre while integrating complex moral quandaries into your story, this game is a must-have. I’ll add that there are three books of rules, but two of them are add-ons. The primary book is the only one you need to learn both how to play and how to run the game. Major bonus: Modiphius offers a PDF guarantee, so if you buy the book at your local game store, you can contact their customer support team to get a free (limited-click) download link for the game PDF! As someone doing gaming ministry, I see it as the perfect vehicle to bring God and gaming together to allow players to integrate biblical doctrine at the table, especially when wrestling with moral choices that lead to uncertain, bad, and very bad outcomes.